Film Courage: Why don't you outline screenplays? Well I think I described before what I like to
do. I like to just do all the beats, I like to write the first act, have the second act
turn and the ending because I found that like if you are sometimes too methodical about figuring
it all out up front you can't discover certain things. You'll find things that are happening
along the way that are like surprises even to you and sometimes that stuff becomes even better
you know you're like oh i didn't think about that but you know how do i get these guys from the end
of act one to the second second act turn and you just discover it i know some people that like to
to do a complete beat sheet you have to do that when you're hired to write things
you know you have to give them a you can't do that that's but for a spec purpose or writing a script
you can you know have your own process so it feels a little stale sometimes when you have everything
beated out you know and you're like okay because that two weeks you're writing out the beat sheet
you might get a better sense of your story and your characters
four weeks into writing the script and find things along the way that like oh i never
thought about that guy like that or this like this do you get bored when things are too easy
yeah yeah good challenge yeah because i get the sense you figure things out very easily and so
you want to go to the next level yeah especially well i think too you have to kind of
as a screenwriter like reinvent like where you want to go every couple years too unless you're
you're happy in the area the area that you're in so yeah no i guess i do yeah i never thought of
it like that but yeah i think i'm always trying to like reinvent or kind of come to get the next
level or do certain things and figure out how it works so yeah i do i like to make things hard on
myself no but that you just enjoy a challenge you know you like to be you don't it's kind of like i
hate to use like a lab rat i mean i'm sorry but you know they they get the cheese they get out
okay they they solve the thing yeah if you want to really boil it down to that but we all kind of
want something more because if things are too easy then it's just everything's boring and then you
can become depressed yeah and i don't know where i get it from but i'm really in in to like getting
things finished like like i think i said earlier i'm never happy till something's done i enjoy the
process more but i've been on movie shoots and and things where it's getting made i'm miserable the
whole time because i'm i still think something's gonna go wrong you know when it's finished
and then i also have a weird amnesia when projects are finished i don't think about them again
i just move on i think of most of the films i've worked on that have been made i've maybe watched
once i don't ever go back and watch them or think about them and john carpenter has that attribute
if you watch the brian de palma documentary he has that not that i'm comparing myself to them
but it's like a good thing to have if you're going to do this professionally it's like
once you're done with something you just move on you don't even think about that old project again
it's like what's next how is someone who doesn't outline so great at structure
that's a good question i think i just know how films work and watch a lot of films and just
just know that the structure will find itself because i can i'm very open to like okay
and i think i always have a good understanding of like tracking tracking characters is a very
important thing in script you have to make sure that somebody hasn't disappeared too far out of
the story like if you have a bad guy in something and he shows up page 20 and then shows up page 40.
he can't disappear until page 90. we have to see what he's doing at some point so i i think
i always have a really good understanding of like making sure we track people and like okay we've
seen this character do this now we have to go back to that person we have to go find that person
catch them all up put put them where they go so you know and how do you remember do you
have almost have like um bullet points like okay there's there's joe over here there's there's mary
and then making sure that i'm i'm still seeing their names somewhere within the last few pages
yeah it's it's i don't know it's kind of easy for me it seems easy i know some people will like
chart out where characters are and so everybody has their own process you know and you can do note
cards and things like that i kind of always have an idea where they're coming going and you know
and also too that's also part of you get better right into you you throw away any characters that
don't mean anything to the story you know if you're a newer writer and you have all these
characters that don't mean anything you're going to have a hard time tracking people but if you you
really pay attention to films especially commercial ones they don't have a lot of
characters there might be a lot of people in it but it centers around a small group of people
you know the godfather might be one thing but i mean if you look at indiana jones you know it's
always just him and then they'll go to the bad guys and then they kind of like you're along the
journey with him so it's yeah it's more like about tracking those people but most studio films don't
have a lot of people marvel films aside you know when the avengers have like 8 000 characters but
even then if you watch the avenger movies they're great at tracking all those different people
you know they keep coming going out of story just enough so you don't forget them
what about something like crash crash that's a little bit different but um that's you know yeah
that's that's more the extreme but i mean but i mean that's a kind of different film
you know the still is anchored though by you know it's anchored more by stories
you know so yeah that's a good example but that's a little bit different that's
you know and i don't know how many kind of movies like that they're doing nowadays because that was
kind of hit for a while you know the non-linear bouncing around all these multiple stories
so that yeah that's a different kind of movie right but it works you know yeah it was excellent
can you provide a few questions that a screenwriter or producer
should ask themselves before writing a movie or or getting involved with a movie yeah i think the
biggest question is how do i get it made you know if it's if it's you know some kind of gigantic
sci-fi epic that cost 400 million dollars you know it's it's like a non-starter but
i think you just need to really ask you have to be passionate about it too and really you know want
to see it to the finish line because it takes a lot of work i mean you want to get paid but you
know money is your main drive that's not always you know what happens there's things i've worked
on and worked on them so long that even though i got paid well i probably end up making you know a
dollar an hour dollar fifty you know if you timed it out but it was like i was like i'm determined
to get this film finished so i think that's the biggest question because why write something if
you're not going to try to really get it made or use it to get other jobs or create a career you
know if it's just for your friends to read that's a whole other thing all together how many films
do you think have been made where they were too ambitious in terms of the budget and and a lot
people just couldn't be told no that happens all the time and i mean it just happens in the
sense that like you start and you something goes wrong because with indie films the budgets are so
precise that if something goes wrong it could screw the whole movie up you don't get to shoot
that you now it's not 25 days it's 20 days you know there's so many things that can go wrong but
i think that's where that has very little do with the screenplay but more to do with the director
being able to like change things and adjust things on the fly and go okay that we can cut that out we
can move that to there and we can save this whole thing and not make have it be a mess
but it happens a lot so if you are hired for a screenplay and you do have to do a beat
sheet and you submit it and then a couple weeks later you come up with better ideas
are you stuck with that that same beat sheet and that same progression no you can i mean
what you can do is is if you're hired to write something you have to communicate you know with
the producers because every step is tiered it's like you get paid to start you get paid when you
turn in the beat sheet or the treatment you get paid to start writing the script but if you start
coming up with changes or figure things out you can just you know get the producers on the phone
who who have paid you to write it and throw your ideas at them and they may love them they might
they might just say stick with the beachy they might say oh that's great let's try that so it's
a process you know you you have to be in really good communication when you're taking money from
people and working with somebody and keep them informed but you can't make wholesale changes and
go here it is because your agent will be calling you go why are they calling me all pissed off and
you did this wrong you know so you have to kind of like you have to do what they want
they're hiring you to do something it's like if they hired you to paint the house you know
gray you can't paint it red you know and say oh i thought this section would look better like this
so you're their employee but you know you get the job by coming in with your own take and your own
pitch which they like but then it becomes theirs when they start paying you and then you just have
to work with them you know but yeah most great producers you come up with a great idea you just
run it by them they're like oh that's much better so they're not resistant to it but you have to you
can't just decide to go in the third act a totally different way would you say a lot of screenwriters
fail because they're not writing movies that hollywood wants to make yeah i mean you have to
like it goes back to what it's talking about with like you know the business side of it you have to
make money for people you know it's it's not it's not a situation where people just trying to throw
money away or light it on fire so if you cannot create a screenplay that like producers think
they can at least get their money back and some because sales agents take a cut everybody takes
a cut so you have to actually make some profit on top of it someone along the line is going to
lose money and that's not what most people want to do you know there's like i said there's some
billionaires that just want to throw money at things and and don't care but those are
few and far between so i think yeah you have to be very honest with yourself about what people
are buying you know you can't make some weird you know film that like speaks to you and your small
group of friends and expect somebody to give you a million dollars to make it and no one else gets it
and the universal appeal that you talked about previously just sci-fi horror in action well that
has foreign appeals so yeah that that's part of the process too is like you have to keep in mind
that like the form the the foreign mark there's two markets the domestic market which is you
know north america and then the foreign market which is the rest of the world that you know
what a you know some movie about skateboarders in hollywood you know in love might not translate in
in you know japan the same way a horror movie would or a thriller so you it that that's a
whole nother section of money that comes in on a film so yeah it becomes harder and harder the more
esoteric something is now that's where sometimes the greatest movies come from you know like
gasps brno makes insane crazy you know esoteric movies that that do really well and are cool but
again those are few and far between and in america i think they're less likely to take chances and
europe i've worked with a few european producers and they seem a little bit more you know into the
art they also treat directors and writers a little differently with a little bit more respect and and
or more the auteur theory than than here but you know it's it's part of the problem is if you don't
do stuff that people can make money off of it doesn't be commercial but it has to have a market
you